Offline web directories...

Does anyone take them seriously?

[ronin]

In a bookshop the other day, I picked up a 2005 web directory (a pocket-sized 600 page book) out of curiosity and was quite surprised to see my site listed and reviewed. (No-one ever contacted me about it!)

However, the question, surely, is how many people actually look up websites in a book (or a magazine) before going online to visit the site? Not many, I'd wager, but perhaps I'm wrong.

Does anyone here take offline directories seriously?

[Webwork]

I remember having a good laugh about one of these directories the better part of 2 years ago.

If I could convince my conscience to give me a break I'd hire their salesforce ;-)

[jmccormac]

No. I used to publish books (paper). One of the techniques a publisher learns is estimating how books are selling in a book shop. I was paying special attention to the printed web directories in a few bookshops a couple of years ago as I was considering publishing country based web directories. The books were the slowest selling books in the computer sections. Not even the newbies bothered buying a single copy and that was over the three months including the Christmas period.

During the dot.bomb era, one of the main newspapers in Ireland even went so far as branding some dodgy UK sourced printed web directory as the Incredibly Indispensible $papername Web Directory. It was crap. A real bish-bosh job. The newspaper's name on it sold a few copies but it was generally regarded as rubbish.

I don't think that people rely on printed directories in the same way that they would rely on a printed phone directory.

Regards...jmcc

[Webwork]

What turned me off is the number of broken links. I mean, nothing I clicked on in the book worked.

[mathguy]

physical books whose only purpose is to list websites. I don't think I have seen one of those in years. The problems I see with them is that they tend to get outdated too quickly. So many websites change URLs or disappear entirely that a directory of any reasonable size would have a few dead links before it got to the bookshelves. I certainly wouldn't pay to be included in something like that. I wouldn't mind paying for an ad in a good quality magazine if the price were reasonable though.